nataliepo

That Queasy Pre-Game Feeling

90 minutes out from the most anticipated football game of this year and I have that terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I've tried to avoid thinking about this game against the top-ranked Patriots since last week's embarrassment that barely qualified as a win.

I'm not a nervous person. I don't believe rumors, or read into perilous omens in the swirls of my oatmeal, and I'm pretty optimistic by nature. But quantitative evidence that another team is better than mine gives me the willies.

And there's only one thing I can do when I'm nervous: eat. And eat I have! Two weeks ago, when watching the Saints/Lions game, I had to get up and make cookies to cut the tension that probably only existed in my own mind. Today, to prep for today's game, we're making buffalo wings and brownies, two foods that I don't even like but will ingest as my physical defense against any other negative emotions. After all, maybe that's the motivation behind our American tradition of pigging out during games (see: Serious Eats' many posts on the subject -- halelujah!).

Cold from the snow, and desperate to pass the time, I took a stab at a "Bayou Cajun Festival Winner" family recipe for Jambalaya from my vaguely-Cajun mother, via her Aunt Reeder (true story). Mom refused to give this to me for the years that I was vegetarian, for the record. What I thought was a delicious mystery of culinary engineering is actually a dead-simple recipe. It even got the thumbs-up from tough local food critic Chef Wayne. So if you're biting your nails over the 6PM game and having friends over to share the agony, you could make this to try to calm your nerves (but don't forget the beer, either).

Momma Po's Jambalaya Recipe

• 2 cups rice
• 2 cups peeled shrimp (uncooked, frozen is OK)
• 2 2lb. packs of Kielbasa (beef preferred)
• 1 large onion
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 cup chopped green pepper
• 1 cup green onion
• 1 cup chopped fresh parsely
• 1.5 sticks of butter
• 2 cans beef boullion broth

Dump it all together, put it in an oven at 350, check it every 20 minutes until the rice is done.

 

 

 

Now I'm headed off to the grocery store to pick up a few more things to keep cookin'. My heart goes out to other nerve-racked fans today (ie, Daisy).  Sigh.  Go Ravens!  And 49ers!

 

I Saw Blade Runner!

After watching all the Star Wars last month (no blog posts! I enjoy my IRL friendships), I gravitate towards Harrison Ford pics much more than before.  Plus, Tracie rolled her eyes and nearly fainted with offense every time I mentioned my ignorance of this movie.  

And so I watched Blade Runner last night!   I should note that I haven't done any internet research about this movie since watching it, and I might have a follow-up post detailing what I've learned. 

First, I watched the movie with a fan that has seen multiple versions of the movie, so I might not be getting the full effect.  The version on Netflix has a Harrison Ford voiceover that gives background and character motivations (a little).  The movie didn't feel overly confusing -- it was clear that his mission was to kill four people that we think are robots because they respond to Q&A sessions in an ultra-emo way.  

Whatever version it was, I liked it!  I love the devolved Los Angeles as a character, like Crank foils it against its characters, amplifying crime and misery.  But the rain was kind of unbelievable.  Why didn't people wear boots all the time if it rained that much?  Future LA makes it possible for people to live with both an excessive police force and open shots on the street.  You know, in that scene where he kills lady-bot #1 with the clear jacket and the bra that doesn't fully close?  He just pulls out his gun in plain rainy-daylight, lets a few loose, and hardly anybody looks up.   80's-influenced future is so, so awesome, where ideas had a gritty, boxy-gray, dilapidated disco feel to them, but it still felt like the 80's.  So much multicultural influence.  All those floating things in the sky. Guns from the set of a crime series, where good cops are still crotchety and drink alone because they're big softies inside.   Videochatting.  Smoking inside. Flying cars with vertical doors -- boom.     

Unfortunately, I recognized the blond bad guy immediately, since I saw an animated gif on the internet months (years?) ago depicting his fate.

I liked the ethical implications in this movie.  Robots who seemed rational and compassionate could commit murders, and it was somebody's job to off them, and he wanted to get out of that business.  I liked watching the crimey underbelly of a second-place planet.  I liked the engineer who wasn't allowed to leave the planet who decided to take the most supreme albeit soggy apartment in LA and fill it with the creepiest clown-bots possible.

But, as happy as I was to learn that there were female replicants, I was disappointed to hear about the pleasurebot model.  I can only assume there were also males of this variety.  I've just seen many zombie/apocolyptic/space age books and movies made after that point that heightens the damsel-in-distress-of-inevitable-rape (28 Days Later, The Road -- seen/read those lately), and it just shuts the door to the possibility of female protagonists.  I can feel the influenced descendants of this movie, like the details of Minority Report's floating city, and the pre-programmed capabilities of people in Demolition Man, so I had hoped it would stray from this standard, but, hey, it's the 80's.  :/  But, hey, we got some good ideas from Rachel, right Janelle Monae?

 

The greatest thing about this movie was the amount of thoughtful detail that didn't detract from the storyline.  I feel like a lot of movies today focus on one innovative detail at a time so you don't miss anything, but it waters down the content and slows the pace. It was awesome to see flying cars, blimps, weird stoplights, people eating noodles outside, and a woman in a fur coat in the rain all within the span of a minute.  Oh, and the FASCINATORS!  So many hair-pieces in that club and I cannot find a single picture on the internet about it.  

Finally, friends, why is he called a Blade Runner?  I was thinking he would do some rollerblading or ice skating chase scenes.  Not hoping, mind you, just looking out for them.

But, yes, the real reason I wanted to see this movie is because Tiff Chow dressed up like one of the characters for Halloween. 
  
      

I wish I had jackets with Rachel's shoulders.  SO BOSS.

 

In Conclusion

It's pretty typical of me to blog about a movie's fashion, ethical plot, and lack of strong women, right?  This thing was a goldmine!

 

I have so many feelings about iPhones that it now creeps into my action movie experiences.

I saw the latest Mission Impossible a few weeks ago, and one singular detail dissolved my faith and interest in the movie in a matter of seconds.  

I've never seen any other Mission Impossible movies, but I know how these secret-government-agency-action-types go, and instilling a sense of lavish expense in the name of beating the bad guy is a requirement. A neato man-in-the-middle screen that simulates a guard's perspective? Yes, please. Grippy gloves to scale the world's largest building? But of course. Russian military uniform tops that flip inside out as Springsteen-style bomber jackets?! Yes, I will take another helping! And explosions, beautiful dresses, nice suits, limitless travel, secret train cars full of weapons, etc.

The thing that killed me was that the eons-ahead Ethan Hunt (played by height-chameleon Tom Cruise) used an iPhone 4 and it was running iOS 4. I bought this now-outdated device six months ago, and the software I run on mine is even newer.  Seeing Cruise use my iPhone (in a BMW concept, no less) crushes the context that I'm supposed to believe that the tech in this movie is the latest and greatest. Replete with the default water-droplet wallpaper, it leaves that endorsement aftertaste that makes my consumer satisfaction nosedive right into my $8 bucket of popcorn.

Is this the end of movies that will impress us? What happened to this actor in Minority Report that captured psychic brain activity?!  Has he lost plots with ambition in his old age? The laughably improbable gadgets of yore motivated us to get closer to solving the technically impossible missions,  so I can't imagine kids today consider Mission Impossible anything worth watching.

 Related: the movie was not good.